Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A stanza or poem of four lines.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A stanza of four lines riming alternately.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Pros.) A stanza of four lines rhyming alternately.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a stanza of four lines
Etymologies
- French, from Old French, from quatre, four, from Latin quattuor; see kwetwer- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“It starts promisingly enough, with the gypsy Maleva's famous quatrain from the original: "Even a man who is pure in heart/And says his prayers by night/May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms/And the autumn moon is bright.”
“The meaning of that quatrain is clearer than the first lines of the poem: “The bottoms of autumn/Wear diamonds of frost.””
“Some anthologies – not many – include the early sonnet to his brothers, whose hushed first quatrain is a paragon of detail-work and scene-setting:”
small, busy flames : Stephen Burt : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation
“This quatrain is fresh and memorable partly because inverts the traditional image: The wise men who once brought gifts to the Christ Child are themselves “borne as gifts.””
Are You Smart Enough to Understand Geoffrey Hill? « One-Minute Book Reviews
“I was inclined to follow the more familiar term quatrain straight ahead until I caught the "sextrain" but no such luck.”
“The word quatrain comes from Latin and it means four.”
“If we are to have a mere arbitrary arrangement of the sonnet, why not the same in a poem of regular or inverted quatrains, or of the Persian quatrain, which is now always given in this form: --”
The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers
“In the third stanza, I consider the middle quatrain, that is, the four lines beginning “Out of this world,” perfectly grand.”
“Ionic a minore is itself, I need not say, the metre of a single Ode in the Third Book, the "Miserarum est," and I have devised a stanza for it, taking much more pains with the apportionment of the ictus than in the case of the trochaic quatrain, which is better able to modulate itself.”
“To be certain the quatrain was his, Nostradamus wants to induce his memory, and asks your help in preparing a medicine.”
Gamezebo: Casual Game Reviews, Previews, Cheats, Tips, Forums, Free Games, and More
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘quatrain’.
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phrontistery - q
from phrontistery.info
qanat, qasida, qat, qigong, qintar, qiviut, qoph, qua, quab, quackle, quacksalver, quad and 227 more...
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Poetry Terms
April is National Poetry Month. Add your favorite poetry terms to this new list!
alliteration, anapest, alexandrine, caesura, assonance, ballad, blank verse, iamb, conceit, couplet, consonance, dactyl and 30 more...
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wanderstar's Words
superlative, mulish, mumps, catatonic, aquiline, clandestine, phantasmagoria, chryselephantine, microfiche, mutineer, reprobate, ruthless and 312 more...
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Consider the Lobster
By David Foster Wallace
percussive, discursive, lugubrious, docent, assiduously, berm, wag, bonmot, imbroglio, telegraph, fissile, rube and 220 more...
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nominative case collection
wine stopper, pyre, roster, hamper, moleskin, elastic, pinnacle, facsimile, nook, plonk, contortionist, dismay and 342 more...
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tranquill's Words
loquacious, unmitigated, trundle, ephemeral, vociferous, trapezoidal, liminal, obsequious, veracity, squash, onomatopoeia, oscillate and 270 more...
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parlerodermime's Words
loquacious, orange, lackadaisical, rhythm, esoterrorist, contrary, enchanted, extraordinary, nymph, chatter, incessant, time and 168 more...
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Dictionary
dilettante, frostjack, perfunctory, impresario, paparazzi, pastiche, lollipop, Cymru, nub, bivouac, knapsack, hoodlum and 105 more...
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Amusing words
interesting words
bonce, furcate, tapioca, tillage, desalinate, garish, litmus, roadhog, azoic, haberdasher, imbroglio, polliwog and 802 more...
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Palabrarium
The delicious wonderful words that I love terribly dearly and without which, the world would be a less inventive and worthwhile place. Also, ostensibly, the reason 1984 and esperanto secretly suck.
panoply, footpad, piccalilli, snickersnee, marl, hispid, greengage, slumgullion, golliwog, mumbletypeg, circumlocution, quiescent and 366 more...
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noele's list
vertiginous, verdant, mellifluous, serpentine, verdigris, traject, amaranthine, luminous, phosphorescent, temerous, cerulean, shapeshifter and 531 more...
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Construction
Words around the construction of words
morpheme, riming, phoneme, assonance, euphony, alliteration, rhyme, logos, etymology, similitude, language, syntactic and 87 more...
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"Q" words
words that inquire into the nature of things
cheese, who, whose, whom, what, why, which, when, whence, whither, where, whether and 56 more...
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unusual
zoonotic, escarpment, rampart, bulwark, booby-traps, booby, lipid, synapse, axon, ressentiment, solipsism, panacea and 71 more...
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lit terms
villanelle, quatrain, spondee, apostrophe, soliloquy, allegory, ellipsis, litotes, hyperbole, synechdoche, foil, metonymy and 4 more...
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What's the "good word?"
Every day this one chap at work asks, "What's the good word?" Every day I try to give him a new one. Here are a few that I can recall easily.
prurient, nascent, cormorant, vilify, odious, cacophony, semblance, quatrain, samovar, couscousiere, adipocere, venial and 3 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for quatrain.
bilby The Rubaiyat of Omar Khwatrain
A stanza or poem of four lines,
A stanza of four lines riming alternately.
A poem in four lines,
A stanza of four lines.
Jun 22, 2012